Ep. 2

Ep. 1

The world is rapidly shifting to videos for published content and I admit it’s way faster to record live with a phone than to type a post (making professional videos with editing and all that shit is a different matter of corpse).

For those that understand Italian, I am going live every firday night on Facebook with my column “schifi, marciumi e ignoranze”. Shortly thereafter all live clips will be uploaded on the YouTube channel. I won’t stop writing posts and the idea of a published new issue of NA still exists, but not before some months.

Italy’s most recent goregrind band I know of (together with the newborn Golem Of Gore), this 2018 7-track tape is a small jewel to look at, neat and classy in its simplicity, I kinda really dig the oriental minimalistic approach to the design the band adopted in both version of this release. Yakisoba’s approach to goregrind on the contrary do actually work for the opposite reason – its efficacy is in being analogue and messy as fuck. It might not be blistering fast but it’s raw and has all the proper garage reverb that is mandatory in this music. The line between sloppy and unrefined might be slippery for the uninitiated but it’s really the difference between a good punk album and a high school jam. This is a band for those into noisegore which is actually played, every hiss and pop and imprecision add to its value. The rest? Gargling roars, samples, Dead Infection-like 2-chord riffs and all the good fun this genres still offers.

Dunkelheit from Germany is probably one of my favorite labels around today. In 11 or so years of activity they keep up a great job at releasing great bands like Tetragrammacide, Blood, Goat Semen, Abatuar etc. for about one hundred releases, all of which caring, just like I do, more for music that pushes boundaries of noise and sickness than mere “genres” alone. They also maintain this tradition of sober, symbolic (or apparently so) layouts, which over time have managed to contribute to the label’s branding identity. Subduer are an interesting new project from Germany that mix elements of power electronics with the chaotic J-Readesque disharmony of extreme Death/Black, some sort of Terror Organ meets Conqueror kind of dry brew. 4 tracks could be not enough to completely savor and dissect the potential of this band but there is enough hisses, samples, drone hammering and manic screams to fulfill a trip to the gym late in the evening. Good stuff as usual, worth checking out.

I have been chewing at the new EP “Puncturing the Grotesque” for a few days now and there’s this song “Gas Mask Lust” that just creeps within the folds of your brain. I was stuck in the traffic this morning and just put it on loop, over and over. I started to think about all the “Autopsy – inspired bands” we have in today’s scene and how they just seem to catch just a facet of the multi tentacled and multi eyed beast that is Autopsy. How is that that they always manage to stand head and shoulder above all the rest of the Death Metal underworld, every single time they release a new album?

That made me think a little, and the usual answers started to shower in.

Listening to an Autopsy song is like being in the perfect storm. How is that that their backbone is punk as fuck, the single chords so raw, the vocals messy and out of place, but at the same time you understand that if these guys were not musicians with 40 years of experience they could just not play this shit? The orchestral taste in which screams and solos are arranged are a bit like having GG Allin and the London Symphony Orchestra at the same time in some sort of deranged jigsaw that, ultimately and bafflingly, makes sense in the most disturbing way.

From the underground Death Metal perspective, these guys have been in there forever. They never had the big hype of Death or the worldwide recognition of Morbid Angel, but yet they are one of the proto-everything bands that just started the whole Death Metal concept (and in my opinion they’re still the band that better embodies it). They are the prototypical antonym of “derivative”. They took the ugliest parts of rock, metal and punk and sewed the rotting chunks with images of utter horror and sleaziness without just focusing on literature and movies, but digging deeper into the most nightmarish essence of humankind from the broadest spectrum. They had this vision in a time of primordial chaos when there was none. Autopsy is relentless, untainted and untamed horror in its purest form, that is, in other words, DEATH METAL.

That is basically what makes them so special: Autopsy is the alpha and omega of Death Metal, complete upon itself. They sum up EVERYTHING conceived in this corner of music. It’s like putting your whole collection in a slow juicer to remove all the fluff. I still believe you could have their records and nothing else on your shelf, and that still would be a respectable, flawless DM collection.

So here is the first installment of a new category of posts called “lyrics dissected”. Most bands nowadays in the Death Metal world (more so on the Grindier side, less so in the Blackest side) barely write lyrics. Some however take their time to communicate something.

Hateful from Modena, Italy is one such band. Here is a long chat I had with Daniele and the lyrics of their latest full length album “Epilogue of Masquerade” (2013).

So let’s start from the conceptualization of the lyrics. Are the ones on the latest albums somehow connected? Is there a common thread?
No common threads, I touched many different themes and I think I’ll continue to write in this way… Each song has its topic. Inthe first album there were some tracks that were linked together but in “Epilogue of Masquerade” I had so many different things I wanted to write about that a concept album would have been a limitation, so to say.

The lyrics on the first song refers to the cover art? “The blackened blood flows into turbulent oceans” looks like it refers to the black liquid spilling from that circular dimensional gate. Did you get inspiration from some Dan Seagraveish illustrated nightmare and built lyrics upon that or on the contrary you first envisioned the lyrics and subsequently engineered the cover art? Abstracting the concepts to the limits, would it be possible to define all the lyrics of the album combined with just a couple of words? What does “Epilogue of Masquerade” refers to? Revelation? Of what?

You are right, but to be precise I wrote the lyrics first. Artifacts of the Damned is about the essence of the artistic creation in general, at least from my point of view. Visual arts are definitely a source of inspiration for the lyrics, as well as many other concepts more related to society or personal experience. I think I use a very “visual” style even when I thalk about society or more mundane things, the atmospheres are very important in our lyrics

Memory is mostly visual after all even if perception is a mixture of all senses, and then some more.

The title “Epilogue of Masquerade” does not refer to any of the songs in particular, It is a sort of “sum” of the overall atmosphere and the sense of “unveiling thruts and exposing inner deformities” that permeates the whole record

What’s the masquerade? Some sort of self-inflicted blindness humanity needs to safeguard its sanity?

Yes, the lies that keep us away from insanity probably.

Maybe a sort of “yang” that permits the existence of luciferian creativity? That brings us to the second track “Corrupting the Veils That Keeps the Mind Sane”

Yeah, the hidden side… Society uses the lies to mantain a sort of difficult order. I tried to dismantle this construct in our lyrics.

What if we needed these lies? Do you believe we can face a world of complete freedom would that be auspicable?

What you find beyond the veil is not necessarily good or illuminating it could be scary and disturbing.

What moves you towards it then? Is it some spark of creation and divine consciousness? Isn’t ignorance bliss?

This concept has been inspired by Mondrian‘s painting research… He gradually dissolved the veil and reached a world of primary colors, a totally abstract dimension.It leads you to a place of no emotions apparently. The lyrics arre the opposite.

Or maybe the apex of emotion is emotionlessness like the combination of colors is white.

He reached a place of violent colors and rumors…that’s probably because I did not go so far. It is possible I went deeper

Sounds like a circular reasoning, an endless struggle for higher conscience that peaks into non existence.

Yeah, that song is probably the faster and more aggressive of the album, I think the lyrics were appropriate

Is this higher search for the founding blocks of reality one way to be “Craving for dead ideals” (referring to track 3)?

“A despicable Harvest” is a more motionless track everything is static the ideals are futile, humanity is a solrt of product of an entity that feeds them to absorb its energy

God? As in the God of Jews.

I think it is a more “earthly” entity, the song has nohing sacred, it is a grey picture of reiterated gestures, hopeless stuff.

The fourth track “And there was light brought my attention to the fact that you use terms like obscure, glowing, light and dark several times in the lyrics. Maybe the album is a journey through an oscillating waveform of light and its absence?

Yes, the lyrics here are like paintings, very figurative…your interpretation is very interesting….there are songs that deal with daily stuff but it is the way they are written that makes them very “pictorial” and sometime inscrutable the fact you are giving interpretations that are very close to what I wanted to talk about is reassuring ehehehe
It once was light is about paranoid and the disgusting felings you experience after a traumatic experience. The loss, the sense of guilt and stuff like that.

Indeed every single lyric could potentially be illustrated.

True, It would be a very interesting project!

So absence of light leads to disgust and exhaustion. Light is therefore the light of the flame of creativity.

We could say that the light is the vitality, the will to expand yourself and create… the quest for immortality through art. As you said before it is closer to the luciferian concept of light.

Not just light but also sound and smell and every sense. Perception and experience as light. The promethean flame. On track five you mention “An unheard sound – Buried by the blanket that covers the mind”, another take on the lack of perception or it’s something else?

Breathing the Whirlwind is inspired by the cataclysms that led the life on earth close to the total extinction so many times in history….once again I used this figure of speech to reflect on all the the energies we spend on futile things on a daily basis

Hard to tell what is futile though.

Futile compared to the immense power of the universe of course.

Unless we can define futile as anything that sways ourselves from higher conscience.

Yes this is acceptable. The message once again is “create and leave a trace before it’s too late” ha ha ha.

You imply search for higher conscience is somehow nobler that experiencing and just taking maximum pleasure from every moment of our life, can’t I just sit and watch the universe unravel?

Of course these traces could be cancelled by events like that but you have to try. It is not my lifestyle, I never enjoyed being inactive and waiting to see what happens but I respect people that are calmer and take life easier It is not myself, and this is reflected on our music

Mammals’ vestibular system regulates balance through impulses sent to the spine, that brings us to other senses with “Instinct of the Carnivorous Mass”. When you mention vertigo.

IIt is a very “organic” text.

The space between senses as perception and sensations as feelings blurs The lyrics on this one feel like a carnal urge to expand

I remember being inspired by John Carpenter’s “The Thing”. Yeah I’ve always been fascinated but the way those alien cells were able to mute form when needed in order to survive.

Some Yuzna and Cronenberg as well apparently.

It’s about the struggle to survive, the organisms on this planet are not here to give up without fighting. It is what we are forced to do all the day but there is also a negative and egoistic side.

Who is reawakened at the end of “Stillbirth”? Seems like the main subject is fading to nothingness and cold, but in the end he reawakens.

It is about the trauma of the birth.I remember reading something where they explained this incredibly brutal experience leaves unforgettable traces forever in our subconscious. A lot of nightmares and paranoids (as well as sexual deviations) we experience during our life could be linked to it

Let’s talk about Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing. Apparently it’s about concealing rage and hatred. Is it referred to a specific category of people? You also mention revenants, is that hatred somehow justified revenge?

It is more about how negative feelings and hatred in particular changes the human habits and shape. This hate could come from the inside or could have been instilled by outer “forces”, like organized religions, groups of power. I Imagined a sort of architecture based on this…The “Ivory Tower” that appears in the end is the place from where this tentacular system irradiates its power. The revenants are this malicious energy’s servants.

Hatred could also be good fuel that can be channeled into positive acts however It pushes you into action

Of course! It gives you a purpose and sometimes makes your mind sharper…Because it drives you to analyze things, the reasons why you hate that certain things and defines yourself.

Celestial Purification looks more visual. Do you think it will ever happen? Maybe it is the true purpose of Death?

I’ve always been intrigued by the geological time scale…the eons, the eras, the extinctions…I had this colored and pictorial image of a giant comet arriving and tearing the world apart. It is atrocious but also fascinating. The snow-white trail with ten thousand harpoons is a Moby Dick tribute. Him and the comet have something in common. They are so huge and relentless that their strength seems to be of a divine nature, every rational construct crumble under their impact.

Ravenous seems to alternate between a first person and third person approach. Is it about mutation and the loss of individuality in a process of externalizing one’s pain? Catharsis through torture?

Yes it partially deal with that. The individuality is lost because the protagonist was searching for answers, thirsty of knowledge, tormented by the aims. In this case the search drove him to a state of pure pain and the negativity rose to a level impossible to contain. Thus he became a sort of “evil generator” leaving to the reader the speculations about how many victims suffered from it.

A bit like the experience of Frank from Hellraiser: “explorers from the further regions of experience, angels to some, demons to others”. But where pleasure and experience is circular, instead of libertine lust, it’s about the impossibility to properly express one’s feelings.

Yeah, this frustration stagnates and creates demons…

Walking into a Nightmare envisions a desolate place crystallized in time where the fire of creation finally arrives. Is it the same driving force that the protagonist of Ravenous experiences?

Maybe a similar force but the scenario is different. Here we have a motionless, oppressive and reiterated reality that is suddenly overcome buy a crazy nightmare or daydream. It is not a totally negative development because at least a more colored world substituted the grey reality, even if it’s apparitions are scary and uncontrollable. The lyrics contains some images inspired by the Selby Jr‘ “Last exit to Brooklyn“, a true inspiration back in the days.

Regarding the last one, BloodlineIs this line some sort of alien construct? Or it comes from the recesses of humanity?And who’s this slumbering tyrant?

Ironically, I think your interpretation is correct…the “line” is a metaphore to describe oneself strong will to live following its own ideals and passions, no matter what. Doing that we become “aliens”, because society probably has other plans for us. The tyrant is the superstructure that you have to tear down (at least in your own mind) to avoid a passive enslavement. I was strongly inspired by my father’s life while writing this song, I hope I assimilated some of his precepts. The song is also one of the hardest to play in the entire record, I think It suits the lyrics very well.

Talking about OSITDM (eh) I forgot a few in the previous post. Here are some Italian bands worth checking in my humble opinion. Most of these have very recently released something, often a full length album so you can still get most of these for quite cheap.

Necromutilator

Necromutilator from Mantua just recently released a new EP on Terror From Hell, same label wo did their debut album in 2014. Mixing elements of very raw, crusty thrash/black and Death Metal in the larger than life way as Throneum or Bestial Mockery with a retro-metallic Hellhammerish sound. Good solid vocals safeguards the band from being strictly compared to the aforementioned bands.

Mindful of Pripyat

This is a sort of super-band that features members of Corporal Raid, Antropofagus and Bowel Stew. They have a powerful, solid punch sound which to be entirely honest doesn’t really fit with my own personal idea of Grindcore – too neatly packed, slick and too precise to be the Terrorizer kinda tribute thing I read in the earlier reviews they were supposed to be, if you know what I mean. But if you are into modern Relapse/Willowtip style ultrafast Death Metal with drum blasts “somewhat akin to grindcore”, the band delivers on all aspects. They have this shitloads of riffs and tempo changes as tight as a straightjacket.

Ekpyrosis

This band recently came out with a full-length on Memento Mori, completely streamed on the label’s YT page. A very young band with double vocals and clear OSDM references that range from early Grave and Therion to Imprecation just to throw in a few random names. Mostly mid to slow tempo with that grindy, sick, festering sound we all like. Considering their constant progression from earlier works I believe the next album could be something really interesting.

Daemoniac

Pure swedish Death Metal sound here, from ex Horrid frontman Max. Toi be completely honest when I started writing this article I only heard their first EP on Xtreem from 2015 and I was completely underwhelmed. While I still think the bands lacks in really memorable, powerful riffing the overall work on their recent debut is really excellent with a rather peculiar dynamic drum work. Superfluous to add musical references here, just get Ekeroth’s book on Swedish Death Metal and pick a random band, you will hear some of it here. Pure Swedish worship.

Fuoco Fatuo

Another Italian band with a full length released this year, this time on Profound Lore. I still haven’t listen to that album named “Backwater” but I have most of their past discography and I can tell you they’re really good shit. Slow, crushing, hypnotic Death/Doom with an ultra slow pace and a deep, swampy sound to drown in, without any superfluous melodies. They have that finnish, heartbroken, inescapable touch that is just a blessing in this sludgier corner of Death Metal music.

Blasphemous Noise Torment

This is a small jewel of a band that doesn’t have, as far as I know, proper and deserved recognition. I really cannot count that many bands from this country that so vigorously grab from the abrasive, unpredictable structures of Revenge or Diocletian, that noisy, anti-harmonic buzzsaw sound that Voivod proposed for the first time in the mid ’80s and mutated into disharmonic Death Black Metal. They have a new album out in 2015, worth buying 100% from german label Amor Fati (soon on vinyl too, limited to 150 copies).

Demonomancy

Demonomancy have a long run of releases on Nuclear War Now at their backs and this year Terror From Hell released a complete discography on a nice tape boxed set that includes all recorings including both demos. They play Beherit/Naked Whipper/Proclamation influenced Black/Death with added variety but that same evocative, abyssal sound and caprine reverb. Think of the aforementioned bands meet SVEST or some other Noevdia band.

Mefitic

One of my favorite bands from my country right now. More brutal and Archgoatesque is Mefitic’s approach to the Blasphemy centered sound, with breathless songs and hammering, south American drumming. Not as primitive as Blasphemous Noise Torment neither as evolved as Demonomancy. Mefitic is reverb and necromancy at its best, a killer band with a full length album on (unsurprisingly) NWN released in 2015.

Lurking Terror

This band from Rome released a demo last year. Despite the seemingly crustie logo they play very downtuned, guttural Death Metal with some vocal reminiscences of Baphomet or Putrilage. Old school in a strict sense, completely devoid of “slam” if the demo had a shittier sound I would have thought they were from the mid-90s. I like their dark sound and shit, they have solos, something I haven’t heard in a while. Classic Death Metal worth giving a listen.

Corporal Raid

One of the earliest Goregrind bands from Italy Corporal Raid is apparently back with their interesting mixture of cricket/bullfrog brutal Death (think Sikfuck or Enmity) and more straightforward goregrind. Thick and blistering fast and not an inch less powerful than 10 years ago. They released a full length album last year on Pathologically Explicit.

Necromorbid

Savage and punkish Black/Death from Florence, Iron Tyrant records just recently rereleased their tape from last year on Cd format. They’re worth listening if you like bestial black/death with an added layer of savagery like Impaled Nazarene or Sadistik Exekution.

Perfidious

Another album released this year comes from Perfidious, antichristian Death Metal from members of Onirik. The abum was released by the hyper-active and very young label Death Metal Insustry. They have a few too many whistles and leaks for my tastes but they are certainly doing a good job. Guttural vocals, Unique Leader tempo changes, crisp production and massive drumming. For lovers of more modern style Brutal Death.

Macabro Genocidio

Playing wild and frantic Black Metal, Macabro Genocidio have just two tapes out so far in their recording history but they’re certainly worth listening if you like weird chaotic South American inspired stuff like Morbosidad. Not entirely in my chords basically because of too high pitched vocals and the sound is a bit too thin but can certainly “improve” with time.

Restos Humanos

Guess what? Another Italian full length album was released this year by englishmen Grindfather Producitons. This time is from Colombian/Italian mongrels Restos Humanos, which I already reviewed not long ago (by my standards that is) regarding a split on Eyes Of The Dead. The band plays honest, loose, vaguely crusty Horror Death Metal with a lot of samples in between the Impetigo way. The Spanish vocals obviously call back memories of Machetazo and Gruesome Stuff Relish but musicwise they’re a bit simpler in their approach. Nice but not a must hear to be honest.

Riexhumation

Riexhumation have their new full EP available in digital format on bandcamp (and YouTube as well, obviously). They play ordinary Death Metal with traditional growls and traditional structures including solos, double vocals and some keyboards as well. I am not too impressed but they have some good arrangements, a listen won’t disappoint anyone, and it’s free too, you lucky millennials.

Here I have my favorites from the list. Check these out at all costs.

Slowly Suffering

Now this is a jewel for you. An interesting, obscure band that is already ten years old but is keeping a somewhat low profile all the way. Their latest release was pressed in 150 copies. They play very old, raw Death Metal that sometimes remind me of a streamlined version of Crematory and other demo-quality unrefined Swedish Death. If I had to pick one from this list I’d go with these.

Necroprofanator

If I dubbed their songs on a blank tape and told you it was a rehearsal from Bolivia you’d believe it. Ultra basic, shittily recorded Thrash/Death the third world way and I completely adore it. If you too have a fascination for tropical, numb, raw music a la Necrofago they are definitely worth checking.